How Democrats can handle radical-baiting from Republicans

My friend Bob McElvaine just did a column on Democrats need to make Republicans own their usage of terms like "socialist" and "radical": Georgia's Senate runoffs show Democrats need a new message on socialism. Here's what to do. NBC News Think 12/06/2020.

This used to be called "red-baiting". But since 2000, in the US we've been referring to the Republicans as the "red" party - a nice historical irony that I do appreciate - we can't really call their accusations against Democrats red-baiting any more. Maybe, "Reds, baiting," maybe?

I think Bob's suggestion is the right approach for both Democrats like Sanders and AOC who want to use an explicit democratic-socialism framework and for centrists like John Ossoff who may break out in hives at the sound of the s-word: make the Republicans own what they mean by "socialism".

Which, translated from RepublicanSpeak, basically means anything the government might do which benefits anyone other than obscenely wealthy plutocrats like Kelly Loeffler or grifters like David Perdue, for whom being a Senator is mainly a way to make money as a day trader. (They are the two Georgia Republican Senators running for re-election in January.)

I quoted some of Trump's political sleaze-slinging in his Saturday superspreader rally in Valdosta, Georgia, in my previous post.

Make them eat their own definitions. So, Republicans want to defund the socialist police and fire departments? They want to do aware with Social Security - it even has "social" in its name! - and Medicare, which St. Reagan himself called socialist? No more socialist public schools? Well, yeah, that is what the Republicans want to do.

As Bob puts it in his column:

The supposed “socialism” that Democrats support includes the military, police and fire departments, public schools, roads, the Post Office, Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes, combating climate change, protecting us all against contaminated foods, overseeing essential scientific research and assuring that medications — and vaccines — are safe and effective.

The last of those are both central to combating the current pandemic and a striking illustration of the absurd lengths to which some Republicans are willing to go to fight what they deem "socialism."

Make them own their definitions!

But he adds an important caution: "it will take something at which the [Democratic] party has long been notoriously poor: messaging."